Baby Precious Always Shines: Selected Love Notes Between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

by Kay Turner (Editor)

Off and on, during the entire period they were together, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas wrote each other little love notes. Calling her "wifey" and most often addressing her as "baby precious," Stein scribbled her love for Toklas in quick moments of unself-conscious desire. And on occasion, Toklas penned or typed letters back to her "husband." Because the couple was virtually inseparable, the notes were written and exchanged at home.

Baby Precious Always Shines presents selections from this previously unpublished correspondence. In first-person documentation, in direct address, these brief mantralike enticements—tender, beseeching, funny and game, sexually charged and sincere, quotidian and queer—disclose the intimacies of a deeply committed, very rare, and at the same time, very ordinary marriage between two of the twentieth century's most famous women. Toklas called their notes "a beautiful form of literature." They are indeed, and when pieced together, they create a tantalizing mosaic, a portrait of a marriage that helped shape the course of modernism and modern lesbianism.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Queer, Lesbian, LGBT

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[michaela · Rating 2 out of 5]

genuinely some bullshit

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am so in love with this book. Intimacy is one of my favourite things in the entire world and this book is purely that - the little love notes and poems and written thoughts shared between Stein and Toklas. To be able to peek into the world of two people so close, so in love - to see pain, misunderstanding, apology, reintegration and simple daily events in addition to the playful eros - is a little slice of heaven to me as a voyeur of humanity.

[Elisa Berry · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating glimpse into the intimate world of a most enigmatic author/artist and her lady love. Stein requested these remain private during her lifetime, sadly due to the world's view of her brand of love, and so we almost missed one of the great, and real, love stories of the modern era. Thank you Kay Turner, a woman I was thrilled to meet last happy new year, for revealing and reflecting upon these lovely, loving, in love women.

[Kelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely adore this collection of selected notes that Stein & Toklas left for each other throughout their long marriage (I don't care, to me it's a marriage). While part of me felt slightly guilty for reading a glimpse into someone else's relationship, each letter brims with so much love, affection, and concern for the recipient that you can't help but get drawn in.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh love that makes fools of us all. An interesting look at an interesting couple.

[Carl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A review concluding with "As a Wife Has a Cow: A Love Story."

[Rae · Rating 3 out of 5]

annotations:

-When you come to feel the whole of anyone from the beginning to the ending, all the kind of repeating there is in them, the different ways at different times repeating comes out of them, all the kinds of things and mixtures in each one, anyone can see then by looking hard at any one living near them that a history of every one must be a long one.

-Do you really think I would yes I would and
I do love all you with all me.
Do you really think I could, yes I could
yes I would love all you with all me.
Do you really think I should yes I should
love all you with all me yes I should
yes I could yes I would.
Do you really think I do love all you
with all me yes I do love all you with all
me And bless my baby.

-My dearest wife,

This little pen which
belongs to you loves to be
written by me for you, its
never in a stew nor are
you my sweet ecstacy.

-knows that his blessed baby wifey is all here and he
is all hers, and sticks to her like burrs, blessed baby

-Baby precious my own delight, my
sweet my tender my always right, my
love my wifie, my all and all my sweetest
baby my little ball, my everything always,
my just like that, just everything always

-Here is a lovely new note book to
fill full of notes
A lovely new note book to fill
full of hopes,
And notes and hopes and
baby's dotes, I dote on she
She dotes on me, we dote on each other oui oui oui.

*-I don't obey
Do this you say
Well do it together and
Thats the way we obey

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lesser-known gem of a book full of sweet, repetitive, soothing love notes.

[Carter Fife · Rating 5 out of 5]

based in like a super carnal and grotesque way